It's possible that recent advisories regarding Java-based jitters overamplify our habituated dependence on oracles and similarly mystical overstimulation, but blaming the messenger for haphazard code is a bit like blaming cold-filtered coffee for our inability to sleep off the effects of an all-night hacking binge. Sure, it's tempting to simply disable the source of our insomnia, but one disability leads to another, until everyone is self-medicating at the local coffee shop instead of facing their symptoms head on, as Turing intended.

Unlike throwing the baby out with the bathwater, disposing of pre-owned coffee isn't grounds for prosecution, but that doesn't make it any less useful when the afternoon doldrums begin their incessant pounding. Clearly, a pound of used java is worth two in the unplugged coffeepot, which is where the whole idea of disabling it goes terribly wrong.

The proof of this lies in the region below and slightly east of the sternum, where the effects of such a brouhaha are most pronounced. Simply put, those who don't have the stomach for strong coffee and bricked computers shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I think this is how it works: You place an order for Schrödinger's espresso machine, and then you put a signed slip on your front door so that the deliveryman will leave the package without ringing your bell. And then, Schrödinger's espresso machine both is and isn't outside your door, so long as you don't check. But of course you *will* check, sooner or latte. (Forgive me.)

Oh, I should have specified that you must order Schrödinger's double espresso if you wish to replicate your results.

Speaking of all this, did you ever the song that Ken Clinger wrote based upon a little vignette of mine about a parrot and a cup of coffee in a microwave? If not, here's the vignette:

THE BIO-MECHANICS OF LONELINESS

A caged Amazon parrot is in one room, a microwave oven in another. The microwave emits a beep every ten seconds... alerting the fact that it still holds a cup of reheated coffee. The parrot mimics each beep in turn, a forlorn whistle to a distant stranger. This surreal dialogue is made up of two-second expressions of loneliness and abandonment, and it goes on like clockwork. Each is its own sort of captive, yet each is trying to connect with another and to chime its own existence. The parrot and microwave have fallen into a bio-mechanical feedforward loop. As the seconds tick steadily toward the millenium, the meaning of this echoing message becomes apparent: 'Something was left here, and it's getting cold.